Fragments of Noir

Friday, 8 May 2026

I Was Trouble

I cheated myself
Like i knew i would
I told you i was trouble

Yeah, you know that i'm no good

You Know I'm No Good
(Winehouse)
Amy Winehouse

image
Audrey Marquis

Thursday, 7 May 2026

Waking up in the postwar world it was as if all the jitters and anxiety that had been submerged for the war effort were now out in the open. Already a new style genre/sensibility/movement had been developing (though it was too unconscious and informal to fit some of those terms). Later dubbed 'Film Noir' this perspective scanned the hardened landscape with jaundiced eyes, yet with an undercurrent of wounded romanticism that made this dark world something you wanted to plunge into again and again.

Joel Bocko
from Noir and Naturalism
thedancingimage.blogspot.co.uk
Oct 2008

Straight Life

A rhapsodic riff on self-destruction. It is also one of the saddest autobiographies ever written.

Terry Castle

Straight Life - Art Pepper

Wednesday, 6 May 2026

More Film Gris - Borderline Noir

Il Grido

Duel

Notti Bianchi

Cool Hand Luke

Streetcar Named Desire

Save the Tiger

Grapes of Wrath

In the Mood for Love

Devil and Daniel Webster

Deep Blue Sea (2011)

The Train

New York, New York

Paths of Glory

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Sort of God

What sort of god would put us here in this goddamned, stinking slaughterhouse of a world ? Some guy that likes to tear the wings off flies ? What use is there living and starving and fighting the next guy for a full belly ? It's a nut house.

Nightmare Alley
William Lindsay Gresham
1946

Tuesday, 5 May 2026

Dance with a Stranger

Ruth's infatuation with Blakely plunges her into a sea of trouble ; she casts aside Desmond even after he's given her shelter and paid for her son's boarding school ; she has a miscarriage and reaches the end of her rope. Dance with a Stranger, thanks to a laser sharp performance by Miranda Richardson, convincingly depicts the peculiar anguish of destructive passion.

Frederick and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice. com